


mirror, mirror

by dance_at_bougival



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 06:14:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dance_at_bougival/pseuds/dance_at_bougival
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like looking at yourself in the mirror, with the ends connected wrong; fractured into strange angles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mirror, mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts).



> for jordan.

The owner of the café thinks they are twins.

 

“Please,” Katherine curls her lips over the edge of her full-bodied Frappuccino with its full three dollops of cream and four sugars. (“I’ve had enough of bitterness, thank you very much.” A roll of her eyes, an almost unconscious feline roll of the shoulders—but everything about her was conscious.) “You think I would let my sister flatiron her hair to death?”

 

“And I would never let my sister dress like an extra from Sin City.” She replies lightly. The tea is a bit too weak for her taste, but she gulps it down. “So I guess that goes for the both of us.”

 

Katherine touches her bottom lip with a flawlessly manicured finger, and smiles. “My God, Elena Gilbert,” she says softly and a shiver runs down her spine. “I guess my initial assessment was all wrong.”

 

Elena raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

 

Katherine leans forward, taut and curled and one long, heavy curl falls indolently over her shoulder. “We were _both_ wasted on the Salvatores.”

 

A heavy silence, and something curls uncomfortably in the depths of her stomach; something like hate, something like recognition. She leans back. Katherine smiles slowly, and clinks her mug against Elena’s.

 

Her doppelganger rolls the word around her mouth like fine wine before she spits it out. “Cheers.”

 

 

 

She tells Katherine everything.

 

The spell, the sword, the cure, the buried ancient, the slaughter in a sea of sand.

 

“They’re all gone, then?” Katherine asks, and her voice is quiet. Her eyes are dark and they do not waver for a fraction of a second.

 

Her voice is curt. “Yes.”

 

“And you got out,” Katherine leans back. Beneath her affected accent, there is the curl of another language, something old and antiquated; Elena has trouble remembering that Katherine is pretending sometimes. She has trouble remembering that the woman sitting across from her affects a façade so effectively that it becomes real. The curl in her voice jolts her awake. “Of course.”

 

Elena swallows, and looks down.

 

“Would you rather,” she says after a long while. “It was somebody else?”

 

Katherine shrugs. “I have other options.”

 

“Stefan? Damon?” Katherine’s eyes are carefully blank. Elena swallows the bile in her mouth and carries on. “Klaus?”

 

“Ah,” Katherine smiles. “Touché. I don’t think I’ve thanked you, Elena Gilbert.”

 

It’s almost like staring into a mirror at a funhouse. There’s a curve to the mouth of Katherine Pierce, ex-Katerina Petrova, that she doesn’t have, something narrowed about the set of her eyes, but otherwise everything is copied exact. Like looking at yourself in the mirror, with the ends connected wrong; fractured into strange angles.

 

When she doesn’t reply, Katherine drains the rest of her mug, and slides it across the table. “I suppose this is as poetic an ending as any. Book end. Happily ever after.” She stands; winks. “Lilith and Eve inherit the earth.”

 

She watches her waltz out of the café, hips swaying.

 

 

 

Katherine finds her in Paris, three weeks later.

 

She slides into place next to her, smooth and sinuous where she is still and unmoving.

 

“Ugh,” Katherine says, drapes an arm across her shoulder. Elena wonders idly if she was lonely, too. “The painting is _much_ better than the painter. Manet was a terrible bore.”

 

“Did you kill him?” She asks, lips curving. She is only half joking.

 

Katherine tilts her head and steps a bit closer to the painting than strictly recommended. “Does it matter?”

 

They stare in silence for a while. Around them, tourists bustle, groups of bored teenagers are lead from exhibit to exhibit, and Katherine turns to cock an eyebrow at her.

 

“What?” she asks, without turning away.

 

“Didn’t pick this to be your favourite.” Katherine murmurs. “I was thinking something horribly perfectionist and dull, for you. Maybe a landscape. Maybe some awfully over-replicated Old Master. _Lady with an Ermine_ , maybe? That’d appeal to your sense of self-righteousness.”

 

It’s amazing how little Katherine’s taunting gets to her. It’s amazing how little you care, once you’ve saved yourself and lost everything else.

 

But she supposes Katherine would know that better than anyone.

 

“You don’t see the appeal of _Olympia_?” She asks instead.

 

“I’m a Petrova.” Katherine says simply.

_Ah_. Elena’s eyes trace the protective hand at the juncture of the woman’s thighs, the blankness of her eyes as she stares outside her frame. _I see._

 

“She’s a prostitute,” Elena says calmly.

 

“She’s also the mountain of the gods,” Katherine replies, and she is suddenly bored, eyes lidded. She grabs Elena’s hand. “You’d be surprised, how close deification and commodification runs.”

 

A beat, and she is leading her away from the painting. Katherine grins. “Put that in your college thesis. You can quote me on it.”

 

They grab lunch.

 

 

 

If she stops ironing her hair, if her shirts have a lower neckline, if Katherine’s heels should no longer be legally classified as assault weapons, then they don’t talk about it. If Katherine introduces them as sisters to the handsome men she meets in bars, then neither of them mentions it.

 

Whether it takes one year or a thousand, there will always be a new world order. There will always be an eclipse.

 

For them, it takes seventeen years, eight months, twelve days.

 

Elena leans back against the bar, her finger tapping on her champagne flute, and points at a dark haired man with a lean body and blue eyes. “Him.”

 

Katherine clinks their flutes together. “Cheers.”


End file.
